ISLAMABAD, June 19: At least 650 tenders of development works have been illegally approved by the directorates of roads and maintenance of Capital Development Authority (CDA) during the current fiscal, a source told Dawn.

The source said the member engineering, Brig Ghulam Akbar Bukhari, and the member finance, Masud Muzaffar, had ordered separate inquiries to probe the tenders approval. He said each uplift work cost Rs0.3 million.

According to the CDA rules, tenders of over Rs0.3 million has to be published in national dailies and approved by members engineering and finance.

However, in case of tenders below than Rs0.3 million, the director concerned is empowered to approve them only by displaying them at the official notice board.

The source said the officials of road and maintenance directorates had split big projects into small development plans so that they could themselves approve the projects.

He said it was against the CDA rules to split big projects into small schemes.